In Wicklow and West Kerry | Page 6

I after working at it all day below
by the river.'
He was shaking with excitement and the exertion of overtaking me; so I
took his table and let him go on his way. A quarter of a mile further on
I threw it over the ditch in a desolate place, where no one was likely to
find it.
In addition to the more genuine vagrants a number of wandering men
and women are to be met with in the northern parts of the county, who
walk out for ferns and flowers in bands of from four or five to a dozen.
They usually set out in the evening, and sleep in some ditch or shed,
coming home the next night with what they have gathered. If their sales
are successful, both men and women drink heavily; so that they are
always on the edge of starvation, and are miserably dressed, the women
sometimes wearing nothing but an old petticoat and shawl--a scantiness
of clothing that is sometimes met with also among the road-women of
Kerry.
These people are nearly always at war with the police, and are often
harshly treated. Once after a holiday, as I was walking home through a
village on the border of Wicklow, I came upon several policemen, with
a crowd round them, trying to force a drunken flower-woman out of the
village. She did not wish to go, and threw herself down, raging and
kicking on the ground. They let her lie there for a few moments, and
then she propped herself up against the wall, scolding and storming at

every one, till she became so outrageous the police renewed their attack.
One of them walked up to her and hit her a sharp blow on the jaw with
the back of his hand. Then two more of them seized her by the
shoulders and forced her along the road for a few yards, till her clothes
began to tear off with the violence of the struggle, and they let her go
once more.
She sprang up at once when they did so. 'Let this be the barrack's yard,
if you wish it,' she cried out, tearing off the rags that still clung about
her. 'Let this be the barrack's yard, and come on now, the lot of you.'
Then she rushed at them with extraordinary fury; but the police, to
avoid scandal, withdrew into the town, and left her to be quieted by her
friends.
Sometimes, it is fair to add, the police are generous and
good-humoured. One evening, many years ago, when Whit-Monday in
Enniskerry was a very different thing from what it is now, I was
looking out of a window in that village, watching the police, who had
been brought in for the occasion, getting ready to start for Bray. As
they were standing about, a young ballad-singer came along from the
Dargle, and one of the policemen, who seemed to know him, asked him
why a fine, stout lad the like of him wasn't earning his bread, instead of
straying on the roads.
Immediately the young man drew up on the spot where he was, and
began shouting a loud ballad at the top of his voice. The police tried to
stop him; but he went on, getting faster and faster, till he ended,
swinging his head from side to side, in a furious patter, of which I seem
to remember--
Botheration Take the nation, Calculation, In the stable, Cain and Abel,
Tower of Babel, And the Battle of Waterloo.
Then he pulled off his hat, dashed in among the police, and did not
leave them till they had all given him the share of money he felt he had
earned for his bread.
In all the circumstances of this tramp life there is a certain wildness that
gives it romance and a peculiar value for those who look at life in
Ireland with an eye that is aware of the arts also. In all the healthy
movements of art, variations from the ordinary types of manhood are
made interesting for the ordinary man, and in this way only the higher
arts are universal. Beside this art, however, founded on the variations

which are a condition and effect of all vigorous life, there is another
art--sometimes confounded with it--founded on the freak of nature, in
itself a mere sign of atavism or disease. This latter art, which is
occupied with the antics of the freak, is of interest only to the variation
from ordinary minds, and for this reason is never universal. To be quite
plain, the tramp in real life, Hamlet and Faust in the arts, are variations;
but the maniac in real life, and Des Esseintes and all his ugly crew in
the arts, are freaks only.

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